EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR THE FIVE DAYS OF MILAN
The same hand which brought Rinaldo's letter to his brother delivered
a message from Barto Rizzo, bidding Angelo to start at once and head a
stout dozen or so of gallant Swiss. The letter and the message appeared
to be grievous contradictions: one was evidently a note of despair,
while the other sang like a trumpet. But both were of a character to
draw him swiftly on to Milan. He sent word to his Lugano friends, naming
a village among the mountains between Como and Varese, that they might
join him there if they pleased.
Toward nightfall, on the nineteenth of the month, he stood with a small
band of Ticinese and Italian fighting lads two miles distant from the
city. There was a momentary break in long hours of rain; the air was
full of inexplicable sounds, that floated over them like a toning of
multitudes wailing and singing fitfully behind a swaying screen. They
bent their heads. At intervals a sovereign stamp on the pulsation of the
uproar said, distinct as a voice in the ear--Cannon. “Milan's alive!”
Angelo cried, and they streamed forward under the hurry of stars and
scud, till thumping guns and pattering musket-shots, the long big boom
of surgent hosts, and the muffled voluming and crash of storm-bells,
proclaimed that the insurrection was hot. A rout of peasants bearing
immense ladders met them, and they joined with cheers, and rushed to
the walls. As yet no gate was in the possession of the people. The walls
showed bayonet-points: a thin edge of steel encircled a pit of fire.
Angelo resolved to break through at once. The peasants hesitated, but
his own men were of one mind to follow, and, planting his ladder in the
ditch, he rushed up foremost. The ladder was full short; he called out
in German to a soldier to reach his hand down, and the butt-end of a
musket was dropped, which he grasped, and by this aid sprang to the
parapet, and was seized. “Stop,” he said, “there's a fellow below with
my brandy-flask and portmanteau.” The soldiers were Italians; they
laughed, and hauled away at man after man of the mounting troop, calling
alternately “brandy-flask!--portmanteau!” as each one raised a head
above the parapet. “The signor has a good supply of spirits and
baggage,” they remarked. He gave them money for porterage, saying, “You
see, the gates are held by that infernal people, and a quiet traveller
must come over the walls. Viva l'Italia! who follows me?” He carried
away three of those present. The remainder swore that they and their
comrades would be on his side on the morrow. Guided by the new accession
to his force, Angelo gained the streets. All shots had ceased; the
streets were lighted with torches and hand-lamps; barricades were
up everywhere, like a convulsion of the earth. Tired of receiving
challenges and mounting the endless piles of stones, he sat down at the
head of the Corso di Porta Nuova, and took refreshments from the hands
of ladies. The house-doors were all open. The ladies came forth bearing
wine and minestra, meat and bread, on trays; and quiet eating and
drinking, and fortifying of the barricades, went on. Men were rubbing
their arms and trying rusty gun-locks. Few of them had not seen Barto
Rizzo that day; but Angelo could get no tidings of his brother. He slept
on a door-step, dreaming that he was blown about among the angels
of heaven and hell by a glorious tempest. Near morning an officer of
volunteers came to inspect the barricade defences. Angelo knew him by
sight; it was Luciano Romara. He explained the position of the opposing
forces. The Marshal, he said, was clearly no street-fighter. Estimating
the army under his orders in Milan at from ten to eleven thousand men of
all arms, it was impossible for him to guard the gates and then walls,
and at the same time fight the city. Nor could he provision his troops.
Yesterday the troops had made one: charge and done mischief, but they
had immediately retired. “And if they take to cannonading us to-day,
we shall know what that means,” Romara concluded. Angelo wanted to join
him. “No, stay here,” said Romara. “I think you are a man who won't give
ground.” He had not seen either Rinaldo or Ammiani, but spoke of both as
certain to be rescued.
Rain and cannon filled the weary space of that day. Some of the
barricades fronting the city gates had been battered down by nightfall;
they were restored within an hour. Their defenders entered the houses
right and left during the cannonade, waiting to meet the charge; but the
Austrians held off. “They have no plan,” Romara said on his second visit
of inspection; “they are waiting on Fortune, and starve meanwhile. We
can beat them at that business.”
Romara took Angelo and his Swiss away with him. The interior of the
city was abandoned by the Imperialists, who held two or three of the
principal buildings and the square of the Duomo. Clouds were driving
thick across the cold-gleaming sky when the storm-bells burst out
with the wild Jubilee-music of insurrection--a carol, a jangle of all
discord, savage as flame. Every church of the city lent its iron tongue
to the peal; and now they joined and now rolled apart, now joined
again and clanged like souls shrieking across the black gulfs of an
earthquake; they swam aloft with mournful delirium, tumbled together,
were scattered in spray, dissolved, renewed, died, as a last worn
wave casts itself on an unfooted shore, and rang again as through rent
doorways, became a clamorous host, an iron body, a pressure as of a
down-drawn firmament, and once more a hollow vast, as if the abysses of
the Circles were sounded through and through. To the Milanese it was an
intoxication; it was the howling of madness to the Austrians--a torment
and a terror: they could neither sing, nor laugh, nor talk under
it. Where they stood in the city, the troops could barely hear their
officers' call of command. No sooner had the bells broken out than the
length of every street and Corso flashed with the tri-coloured flag;
musket-muzzles peeped from the windows; men with great squares of
pavement lined the roofs. Romara mounted a stiff barricade and beheld a
scattered regiment running the gauntlet of storms of shot and missiles,
in full retreat upon the citadel. On they came, officers in front for
the charge, as usual with the Austrians; fire on both flanks, a furious
mob at their heels, and the barricade before them. They rushed at
Romara, and were hurled back, and stood in a riddled lump. Suddenly
Romara knocked up the rifles of the couching Swiss; he yelled to the
houses to stop firing. “Surrender your prisoners,--you shall pass,” he
called. He had seen one dear head in the knot of the soldiery. No
answer was given. Romara, with Angelo and his Swiss and the ranks of the
barricade, poured over and pierced the streaming mass, steel for steel.
“Ammiani! Ammiani!” Romara cried; a roar from the other side, “Barto!
Barto! the Great Cat!” met the cry. The Austrians struck up a cheer
under the iron derision of the bells; it was ludicrous, it was as if a
door had slammed on their mouths, ringing tremendous echoes in a vaulted
roof. They stood sweeping fire in two oblong lines; a show of military
array was preserved like a tattered robe, till Romara drove at their
centre and left the retreat clear across the barricade. Then the
whitecoats were seen flowing over, the motley surging hosts from the
city in pursuit--foam of a storm-torrent hurled forward by the black
tumult of precipitous waters. Angelo fell on his brother's neck; Romara
clasped Carlo Ammiani. These two were being marched from the prison to
the citadel when Barto Rizzo, who had prepared to storm the building,
assailed the troops. To him mainly they were indebted for their rescue.
Even in that ecstasy of meeting, the young men smiled at the
preternatural transport on his features as he bounded by them, mad for
slaughter, and mounting a small brass gun on the barricade, sent the
charges of shot into the rear of the enemy. He kissed the black lip of
his little thunderer in, a rapture of passion; called it his wife, his
naked wife; the best of mistresses, who spoke only when he charged her
to speak; raved that she was fair, and liked hugging; that she was true,
and the handsomest daughter of Italy; that she would be the mother
of big ones--none better than herself, though they were mountains of
sulphur big enough to make one gulp of an army.
His wife in the flesh stood at his feet with a hand-grenade and a rifle,
daggers and pistols in her belt. Her face was black with powder-smoke as
the muzzle of the gun. She looked at Rinaldo once, and Rinaldo at her;
both dropped their eyes, for their joy at seeing one another alive was
mighty.
Dead Austrians were gathered in a heap. Dead and wounded Milanese were
taken into the houses. Wine was brought forth by ladies and household
women. An old crutched beggar, who had performed a deed of singular
intrepidity in himself kindling a fire at the door of one of the
principal buildings besieged by the people, and who showed perforated
rags with a comical ejaculation of thanks to the Austrians for knowing
how to hit a scarecrow and make a beggar holy, was the object of
particular attention. Barto seated him on his gun, saying that his
mistress and beauty was honoured; ladies were proud in waiting on the
fine frowzy old man. It chanced during that morning that Wilfrid Pierson
had attached himself to Lieutenant Jenna's regiment as a volunteer. He
had no arms, nothing but a huge white umbrella, under which he walked
dry in the heavy rain, and passed through the fire like an impassive
spectator of queer events. Angelo's Swiss had captured them, and the mob
were maltreating them because they declined to shout for this valorous
ancient beggarman. “No doubt he's a capital fellow,” said Jenna;
“but 'Viva Scottocorni' is not my language;” and the spirited little
subaltern repeated his “Excuse me,” with very good temper, while one
knocked off his shako, another tugged at his coat-skirts. Wilfrid sang
out to the Guidascarpi, and the brothers sprang to him and set them
free; but the mob, like any other wild beast gorged with blood, wanted
play, and urged Barto to insist that these victims should shout the viva
in exaltation of their hero.
“Is there a finer voice than mine?” said Barto, and he roared the 'viva'
like a melodious bull. Yet Wilfrid saw that he had been recognized. In
the hour of triumph Barto Rizzo had no lust for petty vengeance. The
magnanimous devil plumped his gorge contentedly on victory. His ardour
blazed from his swarthy crimson features like a blown fire, when scouts
came running down with word that all about the Porta Camosina, Madonna
del Carmine, and the Gardens, the Austrians were reaping the white flag
of the inhabitants of that district. Thitherward his cry of “Down with
the Tedeschi!” led the boiling tide. Rinaldo drew Wilfrid and Jenna to
an open doorway, counselling the latter to strip the gold from his coat
and speak his Italian in monosyllables. A woman of the house gave her
promise to shelter and to pass them forward. Romara, Ammiani, and the
Guidascarpi, went straight to the Casa Gonfalonieri, where they hoped
to see stray members of the Council of War, and hear a correction of
certain unpleasant rumours concerning the dealings of the Provisional
Government with Charles Albert.
The first crack of a division between the patriot force and the
aristocracy commenced this day; the day following it was a breach.
A little before dusk the bells of the city ceased their hammering, and
when they ceased, all noises of men and musketry seemed childish. The
woman who had promised to lead Wilfrid and Jenna to the citadel, feared
no longer either for herself or them, and passed them on up the Corso
Francesco past the Contrada del Monte. Jenna pointed out the Duchess of
Graatli's house, saying, “By the way, the Lenkensteins are here; they
left Venice last week. Of course you know, or don't you?--and there they
must stop, I suppose.” Wilfrid nodded an immediate good-bye to him, and
crossed to the house-door. His eccentric fashion of acting had given him
fame in the army, but Jenna stormed at it now, and begged him to come
on and present himself to General Schoneck, if not to General Pierson.
Wilfrid refused even to look behind him. In fact, it was a part of the
gallant fellow's coxcombry (or nationality) to play the Englishman. He
remained fixed by the housedoor till midnight, when a body of men in the
garb of citizens, volubly and violently Italian in their talk, struck
thrice at the door. Wilfrid perceived Count Lenkenstein among them.
The ladies Bianca, Anna, and Lena issued mantled and hooded between the
lights of two barricade watchfires. Wilfrid stepped after them. They
had the password, for the barricades were crossed. The captain of
the head-barricade in the Corso demurred, requiring a counter-sign.
Straightway he was cut down. He blew an alarm-call, when up sprang a
hundred torches. The band of Germans dashed at the barricade as at the
tusks of a boar. They were picked men, most of them officers, but a
scanty number in the thick of an armed populace. Wilfrid saw the lighted
passage into the great house, and thither, throwing out his arms, he
bore the affrighted group of ladies, as a careful shepherd might do.
Returning to Count Lenkenstein's side, “Where are they?” the count
said, in mortal dread. “Safe,” Wilfrid replied. The count frowned at him
inquisitively. “Cut your way through, and on!” he cried to three or four
who hung near him; and these went to the slaughter.
“Why do you stand by me, sir?” said the count. Interior barricades were
pouring their combatants to the spot; Count Lenkenstein was plunged upon
the door-steps. Wilfrid gained half-a-minute's parley by shouting in his
foreign accent, “Would you hurt an Englishman?” Some one took him by the
arm, and helping to raise the count, hurried them both into the house.
“You must make excuses for popular fury in times like these,” the
stranger observed.
The Austrian nobleman asked him stiffly for his name. The name of Count
Ammiani was given. “I think you know it,” Carlo added.
“You escaped from your lawful imprisonment this day, did you not?--you
and your cousin, the assassin. I talk of law! I might as justly talk of
honour. Who lives here?” Carlo contained himself to answer, “The present
occupant is, I believe, if I have hit the house I was seeking, the
Countess d'Isorella.”
“My family were placed here, sir?” Count Lenkenstein inquired of
Wilfrid. But Wilfrid's attention was frozen by the sight of Vittoria's
lover. A wifely call of “Adalbert” from above quieted the count's
anxiety.
“Countess d'Isorella,” he said. “I know that woman. She belongs to the
secret cabinet of Carlo Alberto--a woman with three edges. Did she not
visit you in prison two weeks ago? I speak to you, Count Ammiani. She
applied to the Archduke and the Marshal for permission to visit you.
It was accorded. To the devil with our days of benignity! She was from
Turin. The shuffle has made her my hostess for the nonce. I will go to
her. You, sir,” the count turned to Wilfrid--“you will stay below. Are
you in the pay of the insurgents?”
Wilfrid, the weakest of human beings where women were involved with him,
did one of the hardest things which can task a young man's fortitude: he
looked his superior in the face, and neither blenched, nor frowned, nor
spoke.
Ammiani spoke for him. “There is no pay given in our ranks.”
“The licence to rob is supposed to be an equivalent,” said the count.
Countess d'Isorella herself came downstairs, with profuse apologies for
the absence of all her male domestics, and many delicate dimples about
her mouth in uttering them. Her look at Ammiani struck Wilfrid as having
a peculiar burden either of meaning or of passion in it. The count
grimaced angrily when he heard that his sister Lena was not yet able to
bear the fatigue of a walk to the citadel. “I fear you must all be my
guests, for an hour at least,” said the countess.
Wilfrid was left pacing the hall. He thought he had never beheld so
splendid a person, or one so subjugatingly gracious. Her speech and
manner poured oil on the uncivil Austrian nobleman. What perchance had
stricken Lena?
He guessed; and guessed it rightly. A folded scrap of paper signed by
the Countess of Lenkenstein was brought to him.
It said:--“Are you making common cause with the rebels? Reply. One asks
who should be told.”
He wrote:--“I am an outcast of the army. I fight as a volunteer with the
K. K. troops. Could I abandon them in their peril?”
The touch of sentiment he appended for Lena's comfort. He was too
strongly impressed by the new vision of beauty in the house for his
imagination to be flushed by the romantic posture of his devotion to a
trailing flag.
No other message was delivered. Ammiani presently descended and obtained
a guard from the barricade; word was sent on to the barricades in
advance toward the citadel. Wilfrid stood aside as Count Lenkenstein led
the ladies to the door, bearing Lena on his arm. She passed her lover
veiled. The count said, “You follow.” He used the menial second person
plural of German, and repeated it peremptorily.
“I follow no civilian,” said Wilfrid.
“Remember, sir, that if you are seen with arms in your hands, and are
not in the ranks, you run the chances of being hanged.”
Lena broke loose from her brother; in spite of Anna's sharp remonstrance
and the count's vexed stamp of the foot, she implored her lover:--“Come
with us; pardon us; protect me--me! You shall not be treated harshly.
They shall not Oh! be near me. I have been ill; I shrink from danger. Be
near me!”
Such humble pleading permitted Wilfrid's sore spirit to succumb with the
requisite show of chivalrous dignity. He bowed, and gravely opened his
enormous umbrella, which he held up over the heads of the ladies, while
Ammiani led the way. All was quiet near the citadel. A fog of plashing
rain hung in red gloom about the many watchfires of the insurgents, but
the Austrian head-quarters lay sombre and still. Close at the gates,
Ammiani saluted the ladies. Wilfrid did the same, and heard Lena's call
to him unmoved.
“May I dare to hint to you that it would be better for you to join your
party?” said Ammiani.
Wilfrid walked on. After appearing to weigh the matter, he answered,
“The umbrella will be of no further service to them to-night.”
Ammiani laughed, and begged to be forgiven; but he could have done
nothing more flattering.
Sore at all points, tricked and ruined, irascible under the sense of his
injuries, hating everybody and not honouring himself, Wilfrid was fast
growing to be an eccentric by profession. To appear cool and careless
was the great effort of his mind.
“We were introduced one day in the Piazza d'Armi,” said Ammiani. “I
would have found means to convey my apologies to you for my behaviour
on that occasion, but I have been at the mercy of my enemies. Lieutenant
Pierson, will you pardon me? I have learnt how dear you and your family
should be to me. Pray, accept my excuses and my counsel. The Countess
Lena was my friend when I was a boy. She is in deep distress.”
“I thank you, Count Ammiani, for your extremely disinterested advice,”
said Wilfrid; but the Italian was not cut to the quick by his irony; and
he added: “I have hoisted, you perceive, the white umbrella instead of
wearing the white coat. It is almost as good as an hotel in these times;
it gives as much shelter and nearly as much provision, and, I may say,
better attendance. Good-night. You will be at it again about daylight, I
suppose?”
“Possibly a little before,” said Ammiani, cooled by the false ring of
this kind of speech.
“It's useless to expect that your infernal bells will not burst out like
all the lunatics on earth?”
“Quite useless, I fear. Good-night.”
Ammiani charged one of the men at an outer barricade to follow the white
umbrella and pass it on.
He returned to the Countess d'Isorella, who was awaiting him, and alone.
This glorious head had aroused his first boyish passion. Scandal was
busy concerning the two, when Violetta d'Asola, the youthfullest widow
in Lombardy and the loveliest woman, gave her hand to Count d'Isorella,
who took it without question of the boy Ammiani. Carlo's mother assisted
in that arrangement; a maternal plot, for which he could thank her only
after he had seen Vittoria, and then had heard the buzz of whispers
at Violetta's name. Countess d'Isorella proved her friendship to have
survived the old passion, by travelling expressly from Turin to obtain
leave to visit him in prison. It was a marvellous face to look upon
between prison walls. Rescued while the soldiers were marching him to
the citadel that day, he was called by pure duty to pay his respects to
the countess as soon as he had heard from his mother that she was in
the city. Nor was his mother sorry that he should go. She had patiently
submitted to the fact of his betrothal to Vittoria, which was his
safeguard in similar perils; and she rather hoped for Violetta to wean
him from his extreme republicanism. By arguments? By influence, perhaps.
Carlo's republicanism was preternatural in her sight, and she presumed
that Violetta would talk to him discreetly and persuasively of the noble
designs of the king.
Violetta d'Isorella received him with a gracious lifting of her fingers
to his lips; congratulating him on his escape, and on the good fortune
of the day. She laughed at the Lenkensteins and the singular Englishman;
sat down to a little supper-tray, and pouted humorously as she asked him
to feed on confects and wine; the huge appetites of the insurgents had
devoured all her meat and bread.
“Why are you here?” he said.
She did well in replying boldly, “For the king.”
“Would you tell another that it is for the king?”
“Would I speak to another as I speak to you?”
Ammiani inclined his head.
They spoke of the prospects of the insurrection, of the expected
outbreak in Venice, the eruption of Paris and Vienna, and the new life
of Italy; touching on Carlo Alberto to explode the truce in a laughing
dissension. At last she said seriously, “I am a born Venetian, you know;
I am not Piedmontese. Let me be sure that the king betrays the country,
and I will prefer many heads to one. Excuse me if I am more womanly just
at present. The king has sent his accredited messenger Tartini to the
Provisional Government, requesting it to accept his authority. Why not?
why not? on both sides. Count Medole gives his adhesion to the king, but
you have a Council of War that rejects the king's overtures--a revolt
within a revolt.
“It is deplorable. You must have an army. The Piedmontese once over the
Ticino, how can you act in opposition to it? You must learn to take a
master. The king is only, or he appears, tricksy because you compel him
to wind and counterplot. I swear to you, Italy is his foremost thought.
The Star of Italy sits on the Cross of Savoy.”
Ammiani kept his eyelids modestly down. “Ten thousand to plead for him,
such as you!” he said. “But there is only one!”
“If you had been headstrong once upon a time, and I had been weak, you
see, my Carlo, you would have been a domestic tyrant, I a rebel. You
will not admit the existence of a virtue in an opposite opinion. Wise
was your mother when she said 'No' to a wilful boy!”
Violetta lit her cigarette and puffed the smoke lightly.
“I told you in that horrid dungeon, my Carlo Amaranto--I call you by
the old name--the old name is sweet!--I told you that your Vittoria is
enamoured of the king. She blushes like a battle-flag for the king. I
have heard her 'Viva il Re!' It was musical.”
“So I should have thought.”
“Ay, but my amaranto-innamorato, does it not foretell strife? Would
you ever--ever take a heart with a king's head stamped on it into your
arms?”
“Give me the chance!”
He was guilty of this ardent piece of innocence though Violetta had
pitched her voice in the key significant of a secret thing belonging to
two memories that had not always flowed dividedly.
“Like a common coin?” she resumed.
“A heart with a king's head stamped on it like a common coin.”
He recollected the sentence. He had once, during the heat of his grief
for Giacomo Piaveni, cast it in her teeth.
Violetta repeated it, as to herself, tonelessly; a method of making an
old unkindness strike back on its author with effect.
“Did we part good friends? I forget,” she broke the silence.
“We meet, and we will be the best of friends,” said Ammiani.
“Tell your mother I am not three years older than her son,--I am thirty.
Who will make me young again? Tell her, my Carlo, that the genius for
intrigue, of which she accuses me, develops at a surprising rate. As
regards my beauty,” the countess put a tooth of pearl on her soft under
lip.
Ammiani assured her that he would find words of his own for her beauty.
“I hear the eulogy, I know the sonnet,” said Violetta, smiling, and
described the points of a brunette: the thick black banded hair,
the full brown eyes, the plastic brows couching over them;--it was
Vittoria's face: Violetta was a flower of colour, fair, with but one
shade of dark tinting on her brown eye-brows and eye-lashes, as you
may see a strip of night-cloud cross the forehead of morning. She was
yellow-haired, almost purple-eyed, so rich was the blue of the pupils.
Vittoria could be sallow in despondency; but this Violetta never failed
in plumpness and freshness. The pencil which had given her aspect the
one touch of discord, endowed it with a subtle harmony, like mystery;
and Ammiani remembered his having stood once on the Lido of Venice, and
eyed the dawn across the Adriatic, and dreamed that Violetta was born of
the loveliness and held in her bosom the hopes of morning. He dreamed of
it now, feeling the smooth roll of a torrent.
A cry of “Arms!” rang down the length of the Corso.
He started to his feet thankfully.
“Take me to your mother,” she said. “I loathe to hear firing and be
alone.”
Ammiani threw up the window. There was a stir of lamps and torches
below, and the low sky hung red. Violetta stood quickly thick-shod and
hooded.
“Your mother will admit my companionship, Carlo?”
“She desires to thank you.”
“She has no longer any fear of me?”
“You will find her of one mind with you.”
“Concerning the king!”
“I would say, on most subjects.”
“But that you do not know my mind! You are modest. Confess that you are
thinking the hour you have passed with me has been wasted.”
“I am, now I hear the call to arms.”
“If I had all the while entertained you with talk of your Vittoria! It
would not have been wasted then, my amaranto. It is not wasted for me.
If a shot should strike you--”
“Tell her I died loving her with all my soul!” cried Ammiani.
Violetta's frame quivered as if he had smitten her.
They left the house. Countess Ammiani's door was the length of a
barricade distant: it swung open to them, like all the other house-doors
which were, or wished to be esteemed, true to the cause, and hospitable
toward patriots.
“Remember, when you need a refuge, my villa is on Lago Maggiore,”
Violetta said, and kissed her finger-tips to him.
An hour after, by the light of this unlucky little speech, he thought
of her as a shameless coquette. “When I need a refuge? Is not Milan
in arms?--Italy alive? She considers it all a passing epidemic; or,
perhaps, she is to plead for me to the king!”
That set him thinking moodily over the things she had uttered of
Vittoria's strange and sudden devotion to the king.
Rainy dawn and the tongues of the churches ushered in the last day of
street fighting. Ammiani found Romara and Colonel Corte at the head of
strong bodies of volunteers, well-armed, ready to march for the Porta
'rosa. All three went straight to the house where the Provisional
Government sat, and sword in hand denounced Count Medole as a traitor
who sold his country to the king. Corte dragged him to the window to
hear the shouts for the Republic. Medole wrote their names down one by
one, and said, “Shall I leave the date vacant?” They put themselves
at the head of their men, and marched in the ringing of the bells. The
bells were their sacro-military music. Barto Rizzo was off to make a
spring at the Porta Ticinese. Students, peasants, noble youths of the
best blood, old men and young women, stood ranged in the drenching rain,
eager to face death for freedom. At mid-day the bells were answered by
cannon and the blunt snap of musketry volleys; dull, savage responses,
as of a wounded great beast giving short howls and snarls by the
interminable over-roaring of a cataract. Messengers from the gates came
running to the quiet centre of the city, where cool men discoursed and
plotted. Great news, big lies, were shouted:--Carlo Alberto thundered
in the plains; the Austrians were everywhere retiring; the Marshal was
a prisoner; the flag of surrender was on the citadel! These things were
for the ears of thirsty women, diplomatists, and cripples.
Countess Ammiani and Countess d'Isorella sat together throughout the
agitation of the day.
The life prayed for by one seemed a wisp of straw flung on this humming
furnace.
Countess Ammiani was too well used to defeat to believe readily in
victory, and had shrouded her head in resignation too long to hope for
what she craved. Her hands were joined softly in her lap. Her visage had
the same unmoved expression when she conversed with Violetta as when she
listened to the ravings of the Corso.
Darkness came, and the bells ceased not rolling by her open windows: the
clouds were like mists of conflagration.
She would not have the windows closed. The noise of the city had become
familiar and akin to the image of her boy. She sat there cloaked.
Her heart went like a time-piece to the two interrogations to heaven:
“Alive?--or dead?”
The voice of Luciano Romara was that of an angel's answering. He entered
the room neat and trim as a cavalier dressed for social evening duty,
saying with his fine tact, “We are all well;” and after talking like
a gazette of the Porta Tosa taken by the volunteers, Barto Rizzo's
occupation of the gate opening on the Ticino, and the bursting of the
Porta Camosina by the freebands of the plains, he handed a letter to
Countess Ammiani.
“Carlo is on the march to Bergamo and Brescia, with Corte, Sana, and
about fifty of our men,” he said.
“And is wounded--where?” asked Violetta.
“Slightly in the hand--you see, he can march,” Romara said, laughing
at her promptness to suspect a subterfuge, until he thought, “Now, what
does this mean, madam?”
A lamp was brought to Countess Ammiani. She read:
“MY MOTHER!
“Cotton-wool on the left fore-finger. They deigned to give me no
other memorial of my first fight. I am not worthy of papa's two
bullets. I march with Corte and Sana to Brescia. We keep the
passes of the Tyrol. Luciano heads five hundred up to the hills
to-morrow or next day. He must have all our money. Then go from
door to door and beg subscriptions. Yes, my Chief! it is to be
like God, and deserving of his gifts to lay down all pride, all
wealth. This night send to my betrothed in Turin. She must be with
no one but my mother. It is my command. Tell her so. I hold
imperatively to it.
“I breathe the best air of life. Luciano is a fine leader in
action, calm as in a ball-room. What did I feel? I will talk of it
with you by-and-by;--my father whispered in my ears; I felt him at
my right hand. He said, 'I died for this day.' I feel now that I
must have seen him. This is imagination. We may say that anything
is imagination. I certainly heard his voice. Be of good heart, my
mother, for I can swear that the General wakes up when I strike
Austrian steel. He loved Brescia; so I go there. God preserve my
mother! The eyes of heaven are wide enough to see us both.
Vittoria by your side, remember! It is my will.
“CARLO.”
Countess Ammiani closed her eyes over the letter, as in a dead sleep.
“He is more his father than himself, and so suddenly!” she said. She
was tearless. Violetta helped her to her bed-room under the pretext of a
desire to hear the contents of the letter.
That night, which ended the five days of battle in Milan, while fires
were raging at many gates, bells were rolling over the roof-tops,
the army of Austria coiled along the North-eastern walls of the city,
through rain and thick obscurity, and wove its way like a vast worm into
the outer land.